5 Infamous People Who Worked As Candy-Makers

[ReviewAZON name=”serial” id=”50″ display=”inlinepost” asin=”0816061963″ trackingid=”mywebsource1-20″ country=”us” width=”200px” float=”left” imagetop=”10px”]Candy is something innocent from our childhood. When we think back upon candy makers, many of us have the image of Gene Wilder or Johnny Depp playing the role of Willie Wonka, the magical factory owner who saved the Oompa-Loompas. However, all candy makers are not as benevolent as we’d imagine them to be. While people like Milton Hershey, Frank C. Mars, or Harry Reese (look them up if you don’t know who they are) are not Infamous People Who Worked As Candy-Makers. The people on this list have a more sinister past. Learn some of the bad things they have done in their lifetimes…

ROBERT W. WELCH, JR.

This American business man and political activist was the owner of the Oxford Candy Company. His company went out of business during the Great Depression, but he was hired by his brother and he ended up making such American classic treats as: Sugar Daddies, Sugar Babies, and Junior Mints. This led to his great wealth and he retired from business in 1956. Welch, who always had an interest in politics, ran for the Lt. Governor of Massachusetts, but lost. He was a financial supporter Joseph McCarthy and his witch hunt for Communists in the 1950s. By 1958, Welch formed the John Birch Society, which was an extreme right-wing organization complaining about anyone they deemed to be “too liberal”. Some of the people they considered too liberal were Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan (all Republicans). The Society, which was well-funded by Welch, became synonymous with extreme-right conspiracy theories and radicalism. The John Birch Society was a forerunner to today’s Super-PACs – though more radical.

WILHELM KOPPE

This German Nazi Commander was responsible for atrocities against the Poles during World War Two. A veteran of WW1, Koppe joined the Nazi party in 1930 and made his way through the ranks to become an SS Commander who participated in the extermination of the Polish Jews. It is estimated that he may have been responsible for ordering the deaths of more than 145,000 of these people. After the war, Koppe, who had been wounded, went underground and assumed a false name. He went to work as the director of a Chocolate factory in Bonn, Germany. In 1960, he was finally discovered and arrested. He was released in 1966 due to ill health and died in 1975.

JOHN HOLMES

Yes, that John Holmes – the porn star. Before John Holmes (real name John Curtis Estes) became a porn star, he worked a variety of odd jobs. Among these odd jobs, he was a forklift driver, a door-to-door salesman, an ambulance driver, and a vat inspector at a Coffee-Nips candy factory. Later in life, he would start performing in gay and straight porn, supposedly appearing in as many as 2250 adult reels. Towards the end of his career, he was involved in a mass homicide, known as the Wonderland Murders, which caused him to go on the lam and later serve time in jail. Holmes would die from AIDS in 1986.

DEAN CORLL

This man was an American serial killer known as “The Candy Man”. Together, with two male accomplices, Corll abducted, raped, tortured and murdered a minimum of 28 boys in a series of killings spanning from 1970 to 1973 in Houston, Texas. Corll got his name after it was found out that he was Vice President of the Corll Candy Company, which was situated across from an elementary school. Here, Corll was known to give free candy to young boys and he enticed them to hang out at the shop by placing a pool table in a back room for them to play. It seems that Corll started murdering boys after the candy company closed in 1968. After this, he went on a killing spree with the help of two other teenagers. Most of his victims were in their mid-teens. This rampage could have gone on a lot longer, had it not been for Corll turning on one of his accomplices, who in turn, shot and killed Corll, then called the police. The crimes were known as the Houston Mass Murders.

JEFFREY DAHMER

Probably the most well-known of these infamous candy-makers was Jeffery Dahmer. Dahmer was an Ohio-born serial killer, sex offender, and cannibal. From 1978-1991, Dahmer murdered 17 men and boys. Most of these crimes occurred in Milwaukee where Dahmer lived. He lived with his grandmother for a short time while working at the Ambrosia Chocolate factory. She kicked him out after finding a gun and complaining of strange smells coming from her basement. Dahmer then moved to an apartment closer to his workplace. Here, he was arrested for fondling a 13 year old boy and spent 2 months in a work camp. Upon release, he went on a killing spree that ended with his arrest in 1991. In a strange twist of fate, one of the boys that Dahmer killed was the younger brother of the 13 year old that sent him to jail. When he was captured, Dahmer was found to have body parts and vats of acid in his apartment. He was trying to create an army of zombies to do his bidding. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, but was killed in 1994 when a fellow inmate beat him to death.